How to Market Your Property Domestically

And all agree that there's going to be a new demographic of guests that is going nowhere. It's the work from home, the work cation guest and that is going nowhere. Stats and trends from Airbnb and Skift show that over the coming months and even the coming year, more and more people are going to look to work while vacationing. Which is why the workation trend is going to go nowhere. So seeing that this trend is not going anywhere, how can you adapt your business to the demands of your new guest? There's so many different things we can do and in this podcast episode I want to pack you off with a couple of things. But before we begin, if this is the first time you're tuning into the podcast, please, please, please make sure that you hit the like button. You subscribe, download and share with other hosts from around the world. I my goal is to help 1 million hosts increase their direct bookings, cut down on the over reliance on the OTAs and evolve and grow with you as we go on this journey. So Team Boostly members, leave a hashtag Team Boostly below. And if you are new to my world, welcome, welcome. Please do go check out boostly.co.uk, put in your email and you'll get seven exclusive videos which contains five tactics and two tools that you can do right now that will help you with your diary booking journey. So let's go in and talk about the work from home. Now what we notice and what the stats show is that when you've got people that are working from home, they are more likely to be traveling domestically to you, so could be three, four, five hours away. We've got reports of people even being 45 minutes away. They just wanted a change of scenery. With everything that has happened over the last 18 months, we've had people that have been living and working out of the same four walls for months on end. So when restrictions lowered and they were able to travel, they were taking the opportunity straight away. So in America, in the USA, the domestic travel in 2020 was up 12%, which is, which is a big chunk. And again in 2021, that stat has not lowered in any way, shape or form. So what can you do to get more of these types of clients, these types of guests to stay with you? Well, number one, you can start to market more domestically. Now how are you going to market your business? First things first, Facebook groups. It's a fantastic resource and you will know a Facebook groups as maybe being the hospitality community, but you've got Facebook groups for Every single type of niche all over the world. There'll be a load of Facebook groups in your local area. So let's just say you were based out of Manchester in England, so that's the city that you are based out of. So what you can do is you can draw a big circle on a map around where you are and you would go and find Facebook groups in the areas in and around. Now, if you've already had a couple of seasons under your belt, an easier way of doing this would be to go back on all of the bookings that you've had over the last few years and do the 80, 20 principle. So which 20 of locations brought in 80 of your guests? Say that you've got three areas. So say one would be Scarborough, say one would be Glasgow and say one would be Newquay. So what you would do is you would go to Scarborough, Glasgow and uk. You would find Facebook groups in and around that area and you would market your business on there. So you would talk about the benefits of, you know, working from home, the workation aspect, that you've got good wifi, it could be that you have a desk that has got work equipment there, printer, ring light, whatever it may be, charging stations, talk about these features and highlight them in the Facebook groups. It'll be a different post and a different picture than what you would maybe using on your Airbnb portfolio or your booking.com account. So you got to think a little different, think locally, think domestically. Another option which is a paid option is you could go to the local newspaper, you could go to the local newspapers in those areas that I mentioned. You could do maybe TV ads, so radio ads, really get in front of the people that are looking in your areas. And again, I think what's really important here, this is all direct bookings. So when you're in the Facebook groups, there's obviously a free option, and you've got newspaper ads, which is the paid option. You are going to be tagged in those areas in and around you, right, that aren't too far to travel, that are domestically. So it's a. It's a great option to start. The best place to start right now is you could just pick up your phone. Any guest that stayed with you in the last two years that you know that was on a workcation or stayed for work, contact them and say, do you know anyone? It's a. It's the most powerful marketing tool that there is. Do you know anyone that has come to the area? Do you know anyone that needs accommodation? You start with that, and you reverse engineer from there. Okay. I hope this is helpful again. My name is Mark Simpson. Thank you for tuning into today's podcast episode. If you could do me a massive favor and hit that share button, share it into a Facebook group, share into a LinkedIn group, share on the course of social media, into Reddit, and let's help more hosts figure out how they can get more direct bookings. As always, I'll be back tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by and take care.